Having listed the Android Apps I currently have installed on my phone in my blog post from last night, I'd now like to list the things that are missing from my android phone.
Mapping and Localisation
The first thing that is missing is a decent turn-by-turn navigation app. I'm looking closely at CoPilot Live, but they don't seem to be releasing Australian maps yet.
I'd want something that runs offline. It would be great if I could get something that works with the OpenStreetMap data. There are a number of people working on this, some listed on the OpenStreetMap Wiki. Unfortunately none of them are quite there yet.
If I was designing an application of this sort, I'd split it up so that different apps supplied different bits of functionality. This would allow the functionality to be used by different parts of the system and hopefully increase the rate of development of all the apps.
Vector Map Data
I'd like an app that supplies information about the local streets to other apps. I imagine an assistant app with an API published on Open Intents. This can then be used to display a picture of those streets, to plan a path, or anything else.
The app would take a level of resolution and a location and return a 'tile' of data that includes the point supplied. There would also need to be APIs to get neighbouring tiles of data.
I imagine that the standard implementation would read OpenStreetMap data from the sdcard. A more advanced version could incrementally download the OSM data from the OSM web-site.
It might be good to define APIs for things like traffic data too so that these could be added later where they're available.
Filtering
I'd like to have an App that uses the vector data supplied by the program above and the Location Provider android API. It should take the provided location as an observation for a multi-hypothesis bayesian filter. Each hypothesis is constrained to be on a nearby road. See this paper for the ideas.
The overall goal of this filter is to help fix the poor localisation I get with plain GPS on my Hero. In many situations it is great, but sometimes it can return a position blocks away from my actual location. This is unhelpful for a Turn-By-Turn directions system. Moreover, it doesn't always seem to correct itself as I walk around.
The aim of this filtering system is to combine knowledge of the road network with knowledge of the GPS position to improve the accuracy of the localisation. If I turn a corner, then any of the hypotheses on a road that doesn't have a corner should be ruled out. In this way the system should converge on a good position estimate even if the GPS unit is being confused by buildings or power lines.
Having tracked the location, this app should then provide it again using the Location Provider API so it can be used by any other app.
Offline WiFi location
It would be nice to be able to localise without either the GPS unit (which uses a fair amount of power) or network access. This could be combined with the Locale app to have low-power location-aware switching of phone state.
A simple app that allowed you to specify particular WiFi Base station MAC addresses and their locations, and which then provided those locations using the Location Provider API with large range, would solve this problem.
This is similar to SkyHook Wireless or Google maps, but keeps a small number of MAC addresses for offline location detection.
Indoor mapping
You could do this to localise indoors. Not sure this is worth the effort over the simple approach above.
Map Display
It would be good to have something that can take vector maps from the map supplier above and produce a nice map for display on the phone. Something like MapDroyd or OSM Android.
It would be great if it could also do 2.5D maps, and allow overlays. It should also respond to the same set of intents as OSMDroid and Google Maps, so it neatly replaces the standard maps.
Contour maps
It would be nice to be able to overlay contour maps. Some Australian contour maps appear to be available.
Route Planning
It would be nice to implement a simple app that asks for a source and destination and then plans a route for that trip. In 'tracking' mode it should be repeatedly re-planning and alert the user when they need to turn around. It should be possible to layer the path on top of the Map Display above.
Turn By Turn Directions
With Route-Planning already implemented, adding turn directions is the final layer on the cake to replace something like CoPilot Live.
Timetables
Together with this tracking, it would be nice to detect when people are on a bus and display current locations of the busses in a city. If this worked well, then we wouldn't have to worry about the NSW STA locking down their data. We could just generate our own.
Locale Changes
The extra Location Providers above would already help Locale make sensible decisions. There are some extra features that could be good for it though.
Carry detector
Add another condition that looks at the g-sensor over time to detect if the phone is being carried or is sitting on a desk. I assume that people move enough that you could tell the difference between a phone is someone's pocket and a phone sitting on a desk, even if they're sitting quite still.
Renotification
It would be nice if Locale could be made to re-notify the user if there are any notifications active when the ringer is turned back on. e.g. If I get an SMS when in a meeting and so my phone doesn't beep, but then I leave the meeting, when Locale resets to the default ring volume it should beep to let me know an SMS had arrived.
Persistent Notify
Add a way to have the phone re-notify if there are active notifications. Should also have a Locale Plugin to switch it on and off.
Combined with the 'carry detector' described above and Locale this could be made to only repeat notifications when the phone is being carried.
Javascript Calculator
I use the Calculate widget on my Mac and really like it. I'd love to see a similar app on Android. It would need to have a nice calculator keypad with the option to bring up the standard ASCII virtual keyboard. I want something that includes these functions. There are other javascript calculators apart from the one above, e.g. Mochikit.
AusLan Dictionary
I'm currently learning Australian Sign Language (at TAFE). It would be nice to have a dictionary like SignBank on my phone. Perhaps a sign-english dictionary would also be possible (Using something like the system in this book).
MobileOTP
MobileOTP is a One Time Password system. It would be nice to have an android app rather than having to use the J2ME one.
A few more quick things I forgot to add this morning...
Sync
I want a contacts sync app for my mac that doesn't suck. Syncing the calendar through Google is OK, although I'd be just as happy not to give them all my data, but syncing my contacts through Google to MacOS address book just doesn't work well enough. I'm hoping that Missing Sync will fill this niche soon.
Things are quite close to working. Funambol have an android SyncML client for contacts. The problem is that Apple's core sync services don't speak SyncML. The iSync app translates their core sync service into SyncML, but it is based around the OBEX protocol for USB and Bluetooth, and the HTTP bearer isn't easy to get working. Either OBEX on the Hero, or HTTP on the Mac would complete the connection... for contacts at least. I think missing sync is probably a better option.
PPTP VPN
NICTA uses a VPN for its internal wireless network. While I get the reasons for this, it means I can't use my phone at work until I have a PPTP VPN. I need to either root my phone or wait for donut to be ported to the Hero.